OSE Principles of Open Culture

by Marcin

OSE Principles of Open Culture build upon the Shuttleworth Foundation Principles of Open Culture. Further, from an operational standpoint, I observe:

1. There are two types of people: those with Open Culture and those in the old guard. I have seen a number of well-meaning people who are the most friendly and progressive, yet who are missing the basic concept that publishing information in the unfinished/development/process stage is useful to promote collaboration. I have seen examples where an individual was presenting technical information for my eyes only, and I requested that if they are not willing to share the document in question openly, then I am not interested in looking at it myself. My reason is that my team is the world. I share documents openly in general - as that allows me to obtain wide and immediate review - and not only from our core team, but from random contributors all over the world. If I am not able to share information openly, I am not able to get as much feedback and collaboration. Since I believe that collaborative development is much more effective than 'let me run off into a corner and come back with a final answer' - I would rather not limit my collaborative potential where secrecy is required. Secrecy takes too much overhead to manage - it is a form of competitive waste.
2. My viewpoint was formulated during grad school, where our group had cutting edge knowledge and I could not discuss it openly - due to the environment of competitive funding where groups compete for scarce resources. I figured that this is wasteful - yet it is the status quo. I promised to myself that I would work on creating a societal infrastructure that fosters collaboration, not competitive waste. Acting on this means to me that I share my information openly. If someone picks up the information and runs with it - that is progress for humanity. It does not matter who does it, as long as society moves forward.
3. Part of the above is publishing all under CC-BY-SA, where we coerce users of the information that we generate to contribute back to society. I am a fierce freedom lover, and this is the only example of coercion that I favor.
4. There are cases when practical considerations make open documentation impractical, and this does not necessarily imply closed culture. The critical distinction is the reason why that person is not publishing.
5. There are 4 cases of closed behavior - though not necessarily closed culture. Closed behavior is an instance. Closed culture is a pervasive and consistent set of closed behavior.
   1. A person does not want to share information because of fear. This is closed behavior and typically implies closed culture.
   2. A person who does not want to share information because they don't appreciate why sharing is useful, though they do not have the same fear-based response as in case 1. If this type of response is pervasive and consistent, then the person also has closed culture.